Conference Chair

Beth Gardner
Special Assistant to the Senior Associate Vice Chancellor
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Beth Gardner is an alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She began her career in development as a special events coordinator for the March of Dimes. She spent more than seven years in health care development, including five years as assistant director and later as director of development for community hospitals in North Carolina. Working in small shops allowed her to have a role in every facet of development—from special events to planned giving, faculty-staff campaigns to major gifts and annual giving to volunteer management.

In 1999, she returned to her alma mater as director of the Loyalty Fund at UNC's School of Medicine. She has worked as director of major gifts at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and as assistant dean for development and alumni affairs at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (her major) before being asked to take over UNC's annual fund in 2003.

Discussion Leaders

Shaun Keister
Annual Giving Consultant
Campbell & Company

Shaun Keister has over 18 years of professional annual giving program experience and has worked with a broad spectrum of educational, arts and conservation organizations. During his career, Keister has been successful in designing, planning and executing successful annual fund programs, particularly via telemarketing, direct mail, e-philanthropy and personal solicitation.

Curently, he is a consultant with Campbell & Company. Peviusly, Keister was the associate vice president for development at Penn State University where he had supervisory responsibility for annual giving, development communications, corporate and foundation relations, donor relations, gift planning, leadership gifts and research/prospect development. Prior to Penn State University, he served as vice president for development outreach at the Iowa State University Foundation. During his 13-year tenure at the foundation, he increased annual giving productivity by more than 80 percent. Through his daily, hands-on experience with the foundation's sophisticated annual fund program, Keister kept abreast of the current trends and new techniques in the constantly changing annual giving field.

Active in the Association of Fundrasing Professionals (AFP) and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), Keister has made more than 50 presentations to large audiences.

He earned his bachelor's degree with honors and distinction from Penn State University and both his master's degree and doctorate from Iowa State University.

Julia Motl Lowe
Director, Prospect Management & Annual Giving Strategy
Tufts University

Julia Motl Lowe is the director of prospect management and annual giving strategy at Tufts University, where she has served in various roles across the university since 1999. In her current position, she works with colleagues from across the Advancement Division to develop innovative strategies for both prospect management and annual giving. Her goal is to create a more coherent strategy for managing donors from their initial annual gift through the development pipeline to the completion of a major gift. Specifically, she provides strategic insight to the school-based annual fund directors, oversees the prospect management team, evaluates data and analytics related to marketing and fundraising, researches and disseminates best practices in annual giving and prospect management, and provides management oversight for the centralized Tufts Telefund program.

From 2003–2010, she worked in the annual fund at Tufts' Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, the last five of those as the annual fund director. At Fletcher she had a track record of double digit annual growth and securing five-figure annual fund leadership gifts. Under her leadership, the fund crossed the $1 million mark for the first time, growing from $775K to just shy of $1.4M. She has an integrated understanding of major gift fundraising as it relates to annual fund support and the vital importance of stewarding and motivating donors, volunteers and colleagues to ensure collaboration and overall success.

Motl Lowe received her bachelor's degree in international relations and German studies and her master's degree in educational studies (focus on philanthropy and higher education), both from Tufts University. She was a Fulbright Scholar to Germany in 1998–99. She is a member of the Boston chapter of Women In Development.

Jonathan Meer
Assistant Professor Public Economics
Texas A&M University

Jonathan Meer is an assistant professor of economics at Texas A&M University. Meer's research interests include investigating an individual's decisions—such as whether to make a charitable donation—and his or her reasons for making them. His work has been published in the Journal of Public Economics, the American Economic Journal, Economics of Education Review, Research in Higher Education, among others.

He received his doctorate from the Department of Economics at Stanford University in 2009 and graduated from Princeton University in 2002 with an bachelor's degree in economics and a certificate in applied and computational mathematics.

Speakers

Chris Bingley
Vice President and Senior Consultant
RuffaloCody

Chris Bingley joined RuffaloCODY in January 2009 as vice president and senior consultant for the MASTERS Division in the Midwestern States. He has extensive experience in all aspects of development, including personal solicitation, phonathon, direct mail, grant writing, leadership, annual gift programs, major gifts, data analysis, campaign planning/preparation and program development.

Prior to joining RuffaloCODY, he served as vice president for annual giving and advancement services at Washington State University and was a board member for CASE District VIII.

Devin Mathias
Consultant
Marts & Lundy

Devin Mathias joined Marts & Lundy in 2011, bringing considerable consulting and advancement staff experience in the development of annual giving programs, young alumni efforts, donor relations, capital campaigns and the integration of social media into comprehensive fundraising programs.

Before embarking on a consulting career, Mathias spent three years as the director of annual giving at the University of Michigan where he oversaw the central annual giving team; reorganized the annual giving department to improve gift revenue, donor engagement and unit service; and developed social media strategies for the university relative to overall philanthropic efforts. He also proposed and led the Recent Graduate Initiative to research, track and solicit undergraduate alumni of the previous five years. This initiative received the 2009 CASE Circle of Excellence Bronze Award for Fundraising.

Prior to Michigan, Mathias was at the university of Florida Foundation for five years, where he served in several capacities including as the director of The Florida Fund. He has also worked with Penn State University's Office of Annual Giving and the Affinity Connection, a private alumni relations firm.

Sheila Smith
Director of Annual Giving
James Madison University

Sheila Smith has worked in development for eight years. She has been in her current position as director of annual giving at James Madison University (JMU) for more than five years. She is responsible for coordinating the university annual giving program including direct mail, telefund, e-solicitations, leadership giving, President's Council giving society and other volunteer initiatives. Over the past five years, the JMU annual fund has experienced a 33 percent growth in dollars raised.

Prior to working in development, Smith had a ten year career in student affairs including roles in admissions, student activities, programming board and Greek life at Washburn University, Western Illinois University, St. Joseph's University and JMU.

Smith holds a master's degree in college student personnel from Western Illinois University and a bachelor's degree in business administration from Washburn University. She serves on the board of directors for the Harrisonburg Rockingham Child Day Care Center, a local nonprofit day care that serves the needs of underrepresented families, and is a DISC facilitator for the JMU Training & Development Office.